November 7, 2014

When people hear that I am a Political Science student interested in Canadian Mining, their first question is always “are you pro or anti mining?”. As a member of MICLA (a McGill research group investigating the conflicts arising from Canadian mining in Latin America), as a witness to the human rights violations on the ground near mining sites in Guatemala, and as a Political Science student who has been told repeatedly the terror of neoliberalism and how its “ruining the world”, my stance on mining should be pretty obvious. It cannot be dismissed that mining activities cause anguish for some of the people living in the vicinity: indigenous communities exploited for their land, workers rights violated with unsafe conditions, and environmental degradation are just a few of the major concerns with mining. But there is a flip side. And this flip side cannot be ignored. Continue Reading…

November 27, 2014

A few years ago now, one of the former members of MICLA compared the task of bringing a robust form of accountability to the overseas mining industry to the myth of Sisyphus. Would that we should be so lucky! At least our poor Greek hero got the satisfaction of pushing his boulder to the top of the hill. But in recent times, the boulder has begun to to move. Continue Reading…

February 5, 2015

Canadian Court takes on Guatemalan Case

In a precedent setting case, Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals Inc. is being brought before the Ontario Superior Court for negligence and criminal behaviour of their Guatemalan subsidiary CGN (Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel) at the Fenix project near El Estor. Filed in 2010, there are three lawsuits being processed which could change the face of Canadian mining; companies might now be held accountable for actions of subsidiaries abroad.

March 22, 2015

As soon as I walked in the convention I understood there to be a certain pulse and pace of both the event and its attendees. I had been funded to attend one of the largest get-togethers that could exist in the Canadian mining industry – PDAC’s annual Convention in Toronto. Continue Reading…